Now showing: Jan. 5 edition of AFTV News Published Jan. 5, 2004 SAN ANTONIO (AFPN) -- The celebrated history of the Air Force’s precision aerial demonstration team, the Thunderbirds, is the subject of the latest edition of Air Force Television News. Produced and anchored by Staff Sgt. Marty Rush, the program is the third in a series of four special editions during the holiday season.Part 1 of the special production chronicles the inauspicious start for the Thunderbirds at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., the culmination of a vision of the late Gen. Benjamin Davis Jr. The segment has interviews with some of the original Thunderbirds team, who tell about how, in many cases, they literally flew by the seats of their pants, fine-tuning the aerial maneuvers as they went.In Part 2, Sergeant Rush spotlights a segment of the aerial demonstration team not normally seen by the general public -- the support element. Maintainers, crew chiefs and life-support airmen are an integral part of the team’s historic success. Sergeant Rush shows how people work long hours behind the scenes to make sure the public appearances are flawless.Part 3 concentrates on the pilots, the six men who perform the daring, high-speed aerobatics at air shows. The segment shows the intense training required to fly precision maneuvers during the low-level, high-speed shows in the United States and abroad.The program comes on the 50th anniversary of the Thunderbirds, part of the recently celebrated centennial of flight. The fourth and final special edition of Air Force Television News will be the annual year in review.Air Force Television News is a biweekly production of Air Force News Service. It is distributed on videotape to more than 3,000 military and civilian outlets worldwide, and is seen on more than 700 cable TV outlets nationwide. It is also available on the Internet at www.af.mil, and can be regularly seen on The Pentagon Channel. The program is closed captioned. Viewers can comment on the program by sending an e-mail to aftvnews@afnews.af.mil.